1. Field of Invention
This invention involves an electronic catalog system which employs the knowledge and experience of a "Sales Agent", which is provided to a computer data base, and used with an inference engine to assist and guide actual customers to products that they will most likely be interested in purchasing. This system employs hypothetical questions and answers, based on the sales agents experience with generic customers, as well as criteria and constraints provided by both the Sales agent and the electronic catalog content.
2. Background Art
It is well recognized that procurement systems have traditionally been manual, labor intensive and quite costly operations. Suppliers, for example will do mass mailings of catalogs to potential customers, the customers would browse the catalogs and select items to be purchased and then the customer would complete a paper order form, or call the supplier to order the items. The entire process, from preparing the catalog to receipt of the order, is very labor intensive and often takes several weeks. If a supplier wanted to continually update his catalogs, or provide different price schedules to different customers, the printing, distribution and administrative costs would be substantial.
On a relatively small scale, some suppliers have offered catalogs through computer services, such as PRODIGY (TM). Employing PRODIGY (TM), a computer user can dial-up a service from home and select items to purchase from various catalogs maintained on the system. Upon selection, PRODIGY (TM) initiates the order with the supplier. While this has made significant improvements in typical procurement situations, there are still numerous needs remaining to be fulfilled.
Current electronic catalog systems which service the customer are generally deficient in several ways. First they are very generalized in the information they provide. These systems are not customer-centric in design. Thus they are generally product oriented and rely on human sales associates to make the final sale. Additionally, they do not rely on the personalized characteristics, needs or criteria of the specific buyer in order to narrow the choices of selection to be offered to the customer. This therefore requires excess time on the part of the customer or shopper to browse through the catalog in order to make the proper selection. The current electronic catalog systems are unable to advise shoppers on catalog navigation and product features when shopping for somebody other than themselves such as gift shopping. Thus current electronic catalog systems present all catalog shoppers with the same presentation format based on an internal machine organization of the catalog's content, rather than dynamically generated presentation format based on a customer's individualized personality, interests or needs and a sales representatives experience. This type of internet electronic catalog business limits the merchant's ability to sell since they still do not have the tools with which to fashion target-sales strategies. As a result the current electronic catalog systems are only slightly better than human-centric, direct-marketing strategies employing time consuming and expensive sales staff.
Customer interaction with current electronic catalog systems follows one of a plurality of pre-set paths along a decision tree, with the customer input typically being limited to responses to pre-defined choices. Interactive on-line catalog sales applications utilize user responses to questions, which may directly or indirectly relate to products in the category. The customer may indicate his or her interest in defined categories of product information and then be provided with appropriate screens displaying available products from this database. Such systems frequently attempt to direct the information retrieval by first gathering information about the customer and the customer's needs, before posting specific product questions, thereby establishing the appropriate path along the decision tree in advance.
Shortcomings of available prior art search and query tools include the fact that all customers must interact with the system using a limited set of pre-established interactions. In addition, all users must navigate through the pre-set paths and iterations even when the bulk of the information accessible via those paths would not be applicable to that customer's needs nor to the customer's level of familiarity with the available information. The latter shortcoming is particularly significant when one considers provisions of product information over the internet. With worldwide access, customers from geographically diverse locations will have different requirements on available product sets when interacting with the same electronic catalog. Different shoppers will also have different interaction parameters with respect to the level of product detail that they require. For example, when shopping for a camera, a professional photographer will approach the interaction with more detailed specification constraints than the shopper who is shopping for a camera as a gift. No currently available systems can accommodate any of the foregoing demands.
Thus, contemporary electronic catalog systems are typically lacking in the following areas. They do not facilitate customer oriented selling procedures that use custom personalized sales advice; but rather facilitate a more product-centric advertising process that relies on human sales representatives to make the actual sale. They present all catalog shoppers with the same presentation format based on an internal machine organization of the catalog content rather than a dynamically generated presentation format based on a customer's interests and the vast experience of Sales Representative's, stored in a data base, to devise product suggestions for the specific customer.
These current electronic catalog systems handicap and hamper their broad utilization and universal proliferation. Merchants, as a result, still have no tool with which to fashion target-sales strategies. This makes the electronic catalog a poor cousin to human-centric, direct-marketing strategies. They are also unable to incorporate cross-cultural, target-sales strategies into electronic catalogs that are accessed internationally over networks such as the world wide web.
As a further note, when shopping with a current electronic catalog, there is no one available to give the customer assistance short of calling an 800 number and trying to reach a real person for advice. This is not always practical since customers are often already using their telephone via their modem to access the catalog in an on-line system. Customers may also be shopping at off hours and providing 24 hour, 7 day a week service help may be cost prohibitive for merchants. In addition, the fact that one calls an 800 number staff line does not always get consistent advice. This is due in part to the fact that turnover is high for 800 staff numbers and quite often the shopper does not get a "knowledgeable" person to advise them. The alternative is that the shopper must be knowledgeable enough about products they wish to buy, or postpone their buy decision until a time which they can get help from a qualified sales person.